Fashion design and merchandising go hand in hand down the runway of the fashion world. Fashion merchandising involves the business side of fashion and offers great opportunities for people who love fashion and want to have a career in buying, product development, management, or fashion marketing. Fashion design and merchandising are demanding jobs but also very rewarding.

The Job Of A Merchandiser

A merchandiser is involved in every stage of the process. Fashion design and merchandising are connected from design to sales. The merchandisers advise the designer on market trends, get all specifications from the project buyers, get samples approved and negotiate the price of the final sale. They are also responsible for making sure that consignments are delivered to the customers according to schedule. In the world of fashion design and merchandising it is the merchandisers who will usually have bottom-line responsibility for all projects or departments during the various levels of their careers. Most work in fashion design and merchandising involves juggling past, present, and future work. Merchandisers spend a great deal of time evaluating sales from previous time periods in order to properly plan and decide goals for future sales. In fashion design and merchandising, it isn’t just about shopping; with fashion design and merchandising the merchandisers must be able to analyze and create a complex business plan aimed at specific buying habits and customers. This requires an ability to forecast trends and then translate them into a profitable business plan for the company.

Anytime a decision is made to create a fashion product and offer it to the consumer, even if it is a kids fashion design or a costume, fashion merchandising is involved, including product development, buying, marketing, or management of the product. Even if it’s just deciding which mannequin should face which direction — odds are good that someone involved with fashion merchandising has the final “OK”.

As with most fashion jobs, the key is to start with disciplined study to direct your talent into a successful career. With the fashion design and merchandising fields there are also many opportunities — whether you’re in school or not — for internships. These internships should be considered vital for advancing your career. Indeed, any work with experienced industry connections — be it in a design house or in retail — provides a key stepping stone for students to meet important industry personnel who have open positions and knowledge to share within the fashion design and merchandising field.

Fashion has been the highlight of almost all civilizations known to mankind. Starting off as a mechanism to cover ones nakedness, dress, head gear, leg wear and other accessories are today seen as a fashion statement to convey one’s social standing.

Accomplishments in fashion design style are increasing very fast. Fine craftsmanship and talent is utilized to design clothing, jewelry, bags, watches and various items. One has to have a basic awareness on the changes in fashion. Those who are employed (self employed or other-wise) in the field of fashion design style, must take into account the desires and looks of costumers. They either work independently or as a group.

The complimenting style that looks admirable in a model may not be appealing to everyone. The designer has to take into consideration the preference of the person who is expected to wear the outfit. They have to make calculations on various combinations of materials with extensive ranges. It also involves the color, pattern and the style. Selecting the right type of style would give welcome appreciation. They also take into account the right kind of outfit for children, men and women.

The fashion design industry practices the basic three types of fashion style.

Designers should be accurate while designing the clothes exclusively for a peculiar customer on the basis of measurement. More priority should be given to the quality of the material and the fabric used for designing the clothes. It should be perfectly stitched within the time.

Readymade clothes are easily available to the public where more preference is given to the cut of the clothes. To exhibit their exclusiveness, these kinds of clothes are not available in large quantity and they are sold at higher rates.

The final one depends on the mass market where fashion industries wait for season to attract the customers. These clothes are sold in the branded name, low of cost to consume time. People make the best use of this opportunity to purchase these clothes with the view that they are affordable.

Numbers of schools are offering new comers to study fashion design style which includes extensive training in many modules. To promote a good fashion design style, all you need is a creative mind for a perfect designing. Even though the designers have their own style of executing things, when designing clothes for another person, they need to apprehend the environment in which they are designing.

Fashion design and merchandising programs help prepare students for some of the most exciting careers in the fashion industry. There are many different diploma, certificate and degree programs in the fashion field and not all of them are related to designing clothes for the runways, as some might assume. There are also education and training programs related to the merchandising, marketing and business side of the fashion industry. Fashion merchandisers, also known as buyers, have an important role in the industry, ensuring that retailers ranging from small boutiques to massive department stores have the latest fashions in stock. It’s an excellent career for fashion lovers who also have good interpersonal skills and a knack for the business side of things.

The Value of Education

If you really want to get ahead in the field of fashion design and merchandising, a bachelor’s degree will probably be your best bet. Diploma and certificate programs will only qualify you for the lowest entry level jobs in the field, and many employers are also looking for more than an associate’s degree these days. You may, however, be able to complete your associate’s degree at an affordable community college or an online university and transfer into a four-year school that offers an accredited fashion merchandising program. If you have a specific job or employer in mind, it might be wise to see what level of education most of the people have in that position or with that company and where they went to school.

The Cities of Fashion

There are many fashion merchandising programs to choose from, and not all of them are in the bustling metropolis of New York City, as some might imagine. Some of the most prestigious fashion design, marketing and merchandising programs in the U.S. are at schools in California, particularly in the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. Programs in cities like Miami, Chicago, Houston and Seattle also carry quite a bit of prestige, and you may find some very formidable programs in smaller cities as well. The curriculum of these programs vary quite a bit, but they all include some basic fashion design courses as well as courses in business, marketing, merchandising, accounting and other subject areas.

Salaries for fashion merchandisers also vary anywhere from $25,000 per year to upwards of $70,000 depending on various factors, including education and training. The more effort you put into your degree program, the more successful your career will be.

Fashion designing is a game of colours. Whether creating apparel or jewellery or handbags, blending appealing shades in contrasting way is the knack of creative designing. I’ve often seen people rejecting a fine-looking dress just because “red is not in,” or “yellow doesn’t suit my looks”and other similar comments on colours. So, colour is one the definitive factors when one buys a style product. This has led designers to believe that their logos ought to be multihued and vibrant. This is often a misconception because one can create an excellent fashion designer logo using just two colours – black and white.

The questions, however, is, “why fashion designers’ logo should be black and white and not coloured?” Here are some answers you can’t easily ignore.

Easy and Cheap to Print

Coloured cartridges are expensive and people often avoid printing in colour when need several copies. They are also more flexible in use as you don’t have to take much care in using them on your flyers, business cards, and letter heads because they can fit well on paper.

Have a Classy Ever-Green Look

Colours go in and out but black and white remain. Black and white is a combination that has been in use since the advent of creative designing and there is no chance of their getting out of fashion. Having this ever-green combination on your logo ensures that your logo will never become out-of-date. You can use this logo forever.

Grab Attention through Excellent Contrast

Black and white colours are popular for their excellent contrast. They go perfectly well together. What more, their contrast is very much attractive and eye-catching, so you can easily grab the attention of the onlookers using this appealing combination.

Stand Out In the Crowd of Images

As I pointed out earlier, when creating a fashion logo, focus usually is on the use of colours. So there is pretty good chance that in any fashion designing competition or event, all other logos will be full of colour but yours will be unique. Besides, the designer has not relied on the colours for creating the appeal, so it will more artistic and creative. In the gallery of logos of all fashion designers, your logo will easily stand out.

Conveys clear message

Have you ever give it a thought that the all manuscripts and document requires black printing on white paper? This is simply because that it’s easiest to read black text with white background. Changing the font colour or background colour can make the message unclear and difficult to read. Black & White fashion designer logo is, therefore, better in communicating its message than a coloured one.

Combining them all, you come up with an attractive, more powerful and unique design with black and white colours which will give your fashion business an outstanding character.

Beverly Houston works as a Senior Design Consultant at a Professional Logo Design Company. For more information on fashion designers logo find her competitive rates at Logo Design Consultant.

Are you one of those students who would prefer to throw way your Math textbook because you are into fashion design and dream of the day when you become a fashion designer? Do you think that taking Math is a bummer and who needs it anyway?

Math is such a central part of our lives; we really can’t avoid it, even if we want to. We use it in so many ways and don’t even call it Math. I discovered this many years ago when I worked in the Math department at a major university. One of the Math professors (male and PhD holder) had done an absolutely beautiful work in tapestry. It was all based on an algebra formula, if you can believe it! His wife got him to do all her quilting designs because he made every design in perfect symmetry.

So if you are planning a career in fashion design or textiles, don’t toss out the math book and definitely don’t garbage your geometry set; you will need them. Let’s take a look at where that geometry set and the knowledge that goes along with it will come in handy:

Shapes – angles in design are important, for example; gored skirts, V-necklines, asymmetrical hems, etc. In order to design aesthetically appealing outfits, geometry is used to make these appealing patterns. Designers use geometry principles to create these new designs.

Prints – geometry in colour is fashionable and sophisticated. An outfit that is more suitable for the office or the business world may well be in a geometrical print fabric.

Foundations of design – design, regardless of what you’re designing, it is based on geometry. It is fundamental to designing fashion and many other things. Without geometry the beautiful and alluring designs we see in the market would not exist. We would just wear plain old sacks and even that is based on a rectangle.

Additionally, if you check out the admission requirements at a university that offers clothing and textiles, you will see may see that one of the core subject requirements is Math. That makes sense because pattern drafting is all about shapes and inches or centimeters.

There is no escaping it; we need and use math every day of our lives. So prepare for that math test; do well in it because the geometry problems you get can be applied to real life situations in our careers and in our daily lives.

Investing in real estate is as advantageous and as attractive as investing in the stock market. I would say it has three times more prospects of making money than any other business. But, But, But… since, it is equally guided by the market forces; you cannot undermine the constant risks involved in the real estate. Let me begin discussing with you the advantages of real estate investments. I found the advantages as most suited and really practical.

Advantages

Real Estate Investments are Less Risky

As compared to other investments, less of misadventure is involved in a real estate property. I will not get away from the fact that just like any investment you make; you have the risk of losing it. Real estate investments are traditionally considered a stable and rich gainer, provided if one takes it seriously and with full sagacity. The reasons for the real estate investments becoming less risky adventure primarily relate to various socio-economic factors, location, market behavior, the population density of an area; mortgage interest rate stability; good history of land appreciation, less of inflation and many more. As a rule of thumb, if you have a geographical area where there are plenty of resources available and low stable mortgage rates, you have good reason for investing in the real estate market of such a region. On the contrary, if you have the condo in a place, which is burgeoning under the high inflation, it is far-fetched to even think of investing in its real estate market.

No Need for Huge Starting Capital

A real estate property in Canada can be procured for an initial amount as low as $8,000 to $ 15,000, and the remaining amount can be taken on holding the property as security. This is what you call High Ratio Financing. If you don’t have the idea as to how it works, then let me explain you with the help of an example. Remember that saying… Examples are better than percepts!

Supposing, you buy a condo worth $200,000, then you have to just pay the initial capital amount say 10% of $200,000. The remaining amount (which is 90%) can be financed, against your condo. It means that in a High Ratio financing, the ratio between the debt (here in the example it is 90% Mortgage) and the equity (here in the example it is 10% down payment) is very high. It is also important to calculate high ratio mortgage insurance with the help of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). If needed, you can also purchase the condo on 100% mortgage price.

Honing Investment Skills

A real estate investment, especially when you buy a condo for yourself, will be a pleasurable learning experience. It gives you the opportunity to learn and when I went ahead with my first real estate property, I was totally a dump man. Ask me now, and I can tell you everything, from A to Z. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. I had the necessity to buy the property and so I tried with it, and I was successful. I acquired all the knowledge and skills through experience of selling and purchasing the residential property. Thanks to my job. It gave me the experience to become an investor.

Not a time taking Adventure

Real estate investment will not take out all your energies, until you are prepared and foresighted to take the adventure in full swing. You can save hell lot of time, if you are vigilant enough to know the techniques of making a judicious investment in the right time and when there are good market conditions prevailing at that point of time.

You should be prepared to time yourself. Take some time out, and do market research. Initiate small adventures that involve negotiating real estate deals, buying a property, managing it and then selling it off. Calculate the time invested in your real estate negotiation. If the time was less than the optimum time, you have done it right. And if you end up investing more time, then you need to work it out again, and make some real correction for consummating next deals. You have various ways and methodologies, called the Real Estate Strategies that can make it happen for you in the right manner.

Leverage is the Right Way

The concept of leverage in real estate is not a new one. It implies investing a part of your money and borrowing the rest from other sources, like banks, investment companies, finance companies, or other people’s money (OPM). There have been many instances where people have become rich by practically applying OPM Leverage Principal. As I had discussed under the sub head – No Need for Huge Starting Capital, the high ratio financing scheme gives an opportunity of no risk to the lenders, as the property becomes the security. Moreover, in case the lender is interested in selling the property, the net proceeds resulting from the sale of the property should comfortably cover the mortgage amount.

Because real estate prices have dropped quite a bit, the potential commissions that real estate agents and brokers could earn have also dropped. But the drop in commissions can be more than offset by the amount of properties that can be sold. And getting quality real estate leads is one of the keys to making this a reality for real estate professionals. This is because there are so many more properties on the market now than there were before the bubble burst.

The rise in the number of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages has increased so much that a very large number of them have decided that they cannot afford to stay in their homes. They would rather sell their home and buy a comparable home for a much lower price, and take the loss so that they can improve their cash flow situation by having a lower mortgage payment each month. And since there is no shortage of properties to buy, these people had no problem finding a suitable home for a good price.

And another result of the rise in available properties is that more and more people are becoming first-time homeowners. Since prices on homes are falling, more and more people are able to afford a home for the same amount they are currently paying in rent. So the logical choice for these people is to buy a house rather than continuing to rent.

These factors all lead to one thing – a higher need for real estate agents to help the buying and selling of all of these properties. Therefore, even though prices have fallen, the quantity of available properties, buyers, and sellers has raised which more than makes up for the lower prices in terms of how much a given real estate agent could make in the current real estate market. And as we all know, the more clients a real estate agent has, the more properties they’ll sell and the more money they’ll make.

The problem comes in when a real estate agent has already gone through their current client list. The best way for them to get more clients is to somehow obtain more real estate leads. Not only do they need more leads, they need high quality leads if they are going to be successful in converting a high number of them into clients who actually follow through on buying and/or selling one or more properties.

So how can you get more real estate leads? There are of course many different ways. These include buying them from an agency that offers them, advertising, subscribing to lead generation websites, developing and keeping current your own real estate website that draws potential

clients to it, and best of all by getting them through your own network. There are undoubtedly other ways of generating real estate leads as well, but these are the most common methods – all of which have proven to work to a certain degree.

One of the easiest ways to get real estate leads is by purchasing them. There are companies whose sole purpose is to find people who want to buy or sell a property. They then sell this information to people who are willing to pay for it. So if you are a real estate agent looking for real estate leads and either don’t have the time to find your own, or simply don’t want to, then this may be a good option for you.

There are two different major ways to do this. You can purchase the real estate leads from a company as a set of data that you will get in the form of a list or spreadsheet. Then you will need to start sifting through them and using the data available to qualify and categorize them yourself. And after that, it’s time to start making calls to find out they are valid leads or not.

The other way of purchasing real estate leads is by subscribing to a real estate lead generator website that will send you much smaller lists of leads on a regular basis. This can be nice because the information is likely to be much more current than buying a single very large list of leads. But this also means that there are fewer to work with so it doesn’t give you as much freedom in terms of choosing who to contact first.

Purchasing real estate leads or subscribing to a lead generation website can also be expensive. This can be a very bad thing since the whole intent of buying leads is to find clients, sell properties, and make commissions, if the leads that you buy don’t turn into commissions. In that case, not only did you not sell any properties (or many properties), but you wasted money on worthless information, and you wasted time contacting worthless leads when you could have been working on finding good real estate leads instead.

Another way to generate real estate leads is by advertising. If you are a real estate agent, broker, or business person, advertising your services may be a good way to generate real estate leads. This type of lead generation is great because rather than you doing the work to find people who want to buy or sell a property, the tables are turned and they come looking for you instead.

In addition to having people try to find you instead of you trying to find them, there is another benefit to advertising to generate real estate leads. The people who are trying to find you are already definitely interested in buying or selling a property. This means that you don’t have to worry about whether they are going to turn out to be qualified leads or not, because they definitely will be.

A similar way to generate real estate leads by advertising which can be even more effective than simply advertising on a billboard or in the paper is by setting up your own real estate website. Websites are surprisingly inexpensive to have hosted, and having one developed for you doesn’t have to be expensive either. And if you learn the basics of website development, you’ll be able to maintain it by yourself after it’s been set up so that you can always keep it current.

The reasons to keep your website current cannot be understated. First, you have to keep it updated with the properties you are trying to sell so that the people who visit your website will have something to look at – and since this list of properties will be changing frequently as your client list grows and changes, you’ll need to change your website often to incorporate the new properties and eliminate the ones that are no longer available.

A second reason for keeping your website updated on a regular basis your page rank will grow higher. Search engines use a number of factors to determine how relevant they are to certain keywords, and where to display them in a list of search results. And one of the biggest things that moves a website toward the top of the list is it’s page rank, which is greatly affected by how active and how current the website is. So the more often you update your website, the higher its page rank will be, the higher it’ll show up in search results related to real estate keywords, and the more visitors you’ll get to your site.

Once you get visitors to your site, you’ll be getting the exposure you want to potential clients for free. They can stay on your site for as long as they want to and look at as few or as many properties as they want to. And you don’t have to do anything in order to help them. In fact there could be thousands of people all on your website at the same time. That is something that you would not likely ever have the opportunity to do in person. This phenomenon is what is known as leverage, and leverage is what can turn a small business into a fortune 500 business in short order when managed correctly.

The best way to do real estate lead generation also happens to be one of the most difficult – at least in the beginning. The method of finding leads is by building a very large network, and using it. This is one of the best ways to get leads because it is one of the most surprisingly effective ways. But unfortunately, it’s also one of the more difficult ways to start, and takes a while to yield significant results.

The first thing you’ll need to do is to start building your network. And it’s not that you just need to start building it, you need to intentionally focus on building your network each end every day, no matter where you are or who you’re talking to. This is because for most people, networking does not come naturally.

If you are like most people, you are probably somewhat shy and don’t make it a point to intentionally meet and talk to new people on a regular basis. But if you want to build a network, you’ll have to do exactly that. This is something that can come as a challenge to say the least, both emotionally and technically, but it is well worth the effort in the long run.

It can be emotionally difficult because a large part of building a large network is dealing with rejection. And if you want to build a large network quickly, you’ll have to deal with a lot of rejection each and every day. Too many people, being rejected is taken personally and it ends up wearing them down so that they eventually give up before they gain the benefits that building a large network provides. But if you can learn how to not take rejection personally, you’ll succeed where so many others have given up and failed as a result.

And networking to generate real estate leads can be done almost anywhere. When you need to put some gas in your car, park on the other side of the pump from someone who’s already there and try to strike up a conversation where you’ll be able to tell them that you’re in the real estate business and can help them or anyone else they know who may be looking to buy or sell. And if you’re really serious about it, you may want to only get $10 or some other small amount of gas at a time so that you’ll need to go to the gas station more often and have more opportunities to network.

You can also build your network by meeting new people at any other place. You could talk to someone at the grocery store, library, church, waiting in line at the bank, or anywhere you are around other people for more than a few minutes at a time and starting a conversation wouldn’t be too awkward. It can be done anywhere, with just about anyone, at almost any time. And the more dedicated you are to it, the faster you’ll be able to grow your network and the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Some of the best ways to network are by talking to the people you already know. These are people who are already in your network, and you can use them to help you grow your network even larger. The most obvious way is to simply ask them if they are interested in buying or selling a property in the near future, and to keep you in mind if they are.

But another way to help you grow your network is to ask them who they know that may be interested in buying or selling a property. You are basically asking them for real estate leads using different words. You could ask them for the names and numbers of people who they know who may be interested in buying or selling a property, or you could ask them to give your contact information to the people they have in mind when you ask them that question.

It’s a great idea to have business cards with your contact information made up when you’re networking. That way you won’t have to rely on people’s memories which are definitely not the most reliable things when compared to something they can simply read from a card. Cards on the other hand make it so that the person you are giving your contact information to doesn’t have to rely on their memory, and it puts forth a more professional image as well which can only benefit you.

Real estate values have taken a dive and one of the results has led to there being many, many more properties on the market now compared to before the economy took a dive in 2008. This means that even though the prices are lower, the higher quantity of properties on the market make it possible to buy and sell more of them and make more money in commissions as a result which will more than make up for the decreased individual property values.

I order to sell more properties you must have more clients. And to get more clients, you need to have more real estate leads. These real estate leads can be generated in a variety of different ways, all of which can be useful to real estate professionals. Having reliable leads will definitely result in more clients, more sales, and more money made in commissions. Purchasing them, advertising for them, or getting them from your network is all great ways go get leads that all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Pick the one that will work best for you, and you’ll be on your way to making more money through real estate in less time that you think.